1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to computer I/O for personal computers.
2. State of the Art
Personal computing is presently in a state of flux as personal computers having computing power rivaling the mainframe computers of not many years ago become widely available at affordable prices. Available computing power has passed the threshold required for many computationally intensive tasks, making possible multimedia, or media-rich, computing without the need for expensive hardware. Because of strong consumer demand, opportunities for computer hardware and software companies have seldom seemed brighter, and personal computing appears to have nearly taken on the status of a national obsession.
The usefulness of personal computers, however, depends on the ability to connect to the computer varied peripheral devices including keyboard, mouse, display, printer, scanner, disk drive, modem, speakers, a microphone, etc. A typical computer is provided with specific connectors for many of these devices as well as general-purpose connectors that may serve any of a wide variety of devices. Despite the desirability of such expansion capabilities, the result is often a maze of cables and a crowded, visually distracting work area. To avoid this situation, computer makers are continually exercising trade-offs between what to include internal to the computer and what to provide external connections for. Still, as the breath-taking pace of innovation in personal computers continues, considerable difficulty remains in providing connections to the computer in order to achieve an attractive trade-off between functionality on the one hand and simplicity on the other.
A known keyboard previously sold by Keytronics Corporation incorporated a flat membrane switch device in lieu of mechanical switches in the numeric keypad area of the keyboard. The membrane switch served no other function, however, than as a substitute for the equivalent mechanical keys of the numeric keypad.
The present invention address the foregoing problem by first recognizing that one peripheral already present in the bulk of all desktop systems is a keyboard. In accordance with one aspect of the invention there is incorporated into the keyboard a flat input device such as a touchpad or digitizer. The flat input device may be used to realize a virtual keypad/mouse. The virtual keypad/mouse is a touch-sensitive device that in one mode of operation functions as a numeric keypad and in another mode of operation functions as a mouse, i.e., a pointing device for positioning a cursor. In still another mode of operation, the device may operate as a digitizer. The virtual keypad/mouse may be connected to the computer by a cable in addition to the conventional keyboard cable. In accordance with another aspect of the invention, there is incorporated into the keyboard a flat-panel display. The display may serve in lieu of or in addition to a conventional CRT display. In accordance with still another aspect of the invention, both a flat input device and a flat display device are provided, the flat input device overlying the flat display.